by Nikki Winter
Her heart thundered in her ears as his mouth brushed against hers lightly at first and then with an insistence that made her fumble with the movement of her lips. Ashleigh moved away and she shuddered, mortified. She’d turned him off. The one person she’d spent entirely too many minutes daydreaming about, she’d turned off.
“You’ve got to relax, plums,” he told her in a soothing voice. “It’s a kiss, not an otherworldly anal probe. I figured I could at least take you to a nice dinner at the Japanese stand in the mall before we get to that.”
She snorted and buried her face into his neck, catching the scent of cologne on his oak shaded skin.
“You’re an ass,” she murmured.
“But I made you laugh.”
She lifted her head and he lowered his, commanding against her mouth, “Just follow what I do.”
He kissed her again. The moment his tongue slipped between her lips and his palms met the small of her back, Mackenzie decided that this definitely counted as the second and third things on her list.
Two
Now…
“Is it…me?”
The barely perceptible question gutted him. Because he had to give an explanation. One that he didn’t want to voice; one that he hadn’t wanted to ever voice.
So for a moment he stood there, lingering in a spot that he seemed to be glued to, fisting a shirt that was now missing several buttons and questioning why the God of Abraham was punishing him. Diplomacy would work here right? Just because he was an athlete, it didn’t mean he couldn’t grasp the basic concept of emotional politics. He wouldn’t lie to save face; he’d lie to keep someone else from shouldering embarrassment that belonged solely to him.
Ashleigh Thyne cleared his throat and turned to look at the half-dressed woman kneeling on a slightly rumpled bed that they hadn’t even gotten the chance to use before he realized that he just couldn’t do…this. Any of this. She was beautiful, gorgeous even, but it wasn’t enough.
“As bad as this may sound, sweetheart,” he retorted on a sigh. “It’s me.” He stopped for a moment as he re-fastened his belt. “I’m not…okay right now. Believe me when I say, there’s nothing wrong with you.”
“We can try again if you want?” Her eyes glinted and she smiled. “Maybe I can call a friend…”
Well wasn’t she helpful?
Feeling his lips curve, Ashleigh turned to face her. He slipped his arms into the sleeves of his shirt and made due with the buttons left. “I find the offer tempting, but I’m going to have to pass.” It didn’t matter how many friends she phoned in, his ego was on the line, not a few million dollars. He’d rather not have more than one woman witness his wet noodle act tonight. “My head’s not right, darlin’,” he added when he caught her disappointment. His socks and shoes were the next things to be found. “But I’ll tell you what,”—Ashleigh stood from an accent chair—“keep the suite for the night, it’s on me.”
That seemed to appease his guest somewhat. Which was good. He could handle the rate for the five star establishment easily enough, and it simply didn’t feel right to let her leave empty handed.
She moved from the bed to walk him to the suite’s door and made a show of slipping a folded piece of complimentary notepad paper into his front right pocket. Ashleigh felt absolutely nothing. He took the lingering kiss to his jaw with a smile and a dip of his head. When she closed the door, he reached for the paper and crumpled it, waiting until he found the room that held an icemaker and a few wastebaskets to dispose of it. He wouldn’t call her. The same way he hadn’t called the last few women he’d been in this same predicament with from Seattle to Dallas to Tampa and now Atlanta. It didn’t matter. None of it ever mattered. Because none of them would ever be her.
It was infuriating. He shouldn’t still be here, hovering in this limbo of emotions after three years; after countless games and parties and the groupies that came with both. And yet, he was. He couldn’t escape the wormhole. It was a dizzying swim that had become exhausting and the power in his arms and legs couldn’t keep up anymore.
Ashleigh’s stroll through the hotel’s hallway was met with more inviting smiles. He ignored each. Nothing caught his attention anymore. Nothing even remotely piqued his interest, so why bother? Why go through the motions to once again leave another woman unsatisfied and staring after him with a glimmer of hope? It would be extinguished as soon as she realized that he couldn’t give her what she wanted.
He’d told his company that his head wasn’t right and that wasn’t an inaccurate assessment. Nothing was right. He couldn’t feel; hadn’t been able to since he had to face the unyielding heaviness that came with one echoing thought—Mackenzie was getting married. A woman that he’d loved before he’d even known her name was in the process of planning to tie herself to someone else.
That same woman, responsible for hollow pit in his gut, wanted to belong to another man. The realization was like shrapnel. Each time he dug out a shard, a large one stuck him deeper. She’d walked away from him. His plums. It could’ve been something that—with time—he’d coped with. However, it wasn’t just Mackenzie that he no longer had pushing her cold feet into his back at night or moving his things to the left side of his bathroom sink because she enjoyed being on the right. No, it had also been his daughter.
A living doll was missing from his home. Huge kewpie eyes adorned with endless curling lashes and laughter, had to be gazed at through Face Time calls now. Her giggles had to be caught through headphones more expensive than his favorite brand of sneakers because he was just desperate enough to want to hear it as clear as he possibly could. Her face—that bandaged the slightly damaged places he hid—had to be cast onto a television just so he could imagine she was there. And when she laughingly murmured, “Daddy” while wearing her mother’s smile, Ashleigh could feel himself crumbling from the inside out. These joys—Arista—had been separated from him. They’d been spaced a part because of his inability to see how much they’d mattered. How precious each moment was. So now his personal hell was the agonizing reminder that he’d had everything resting in the palm of his hand and he’d simply handed it over with a bow.
“You think that girl’s going to want you for anything other than what you can provide, boy? Wake up. Your value is limited. She’ll leave you as soon as she realizes it.”
He shook the taunting voice of his father from his head, stamping down the words that never seemed to fade.
The elevator ride down to the lobby was quiet and lonely. The same way Ashleigh knew the rest of his night would be. Hustling out a back door that led to an alleyway where his driver was, he didn’t bother with the thought that he’d be spotted leaving. He honestly didn’t care. He just wanted to go home. The moment he’d stepped foot inside that suite, he’d regretted it.
He muttered thanks to his driver as the older man opened the door for him. Slipping across the plush leather seat, he stretched out and rolled his neck back on the headrest, choosing to stare up at the sunroof. Stars danced by his gaze and yet, he didn’t even see one.
The jingling of his phone as his car took off through Buckhead drew an annoyed sigh from him that immediately stopped at the sight of Mackenzie and Arista’s faces pressed together as they poked out their lips and crossed their eyes. He answered on the second ring.
“Yes ma’am?”
“She’s staged a mutiny against bedtime unless she can stay up for ten more minutes and tell you about her day in gymnastics,” came a dry, wryly amused voice with enough huskiness to make him straighten in his seat and pay attention. “You’re not busy, are you?”
It would be at least an hour’s drive before he reached his home in East Point. He had all the time in the world. “Never too busy to talk to her.”
“I thought you’d say that,” Mackenzie replied. “She’s practically climbing my leg to get the phone so I’m handing it over.”
Ashleigh waited as it exchanged hands and grinned broadly when Arista crowed, “Daddy guess wh
at I did today!”
He smiled. “I’m all ears, baby-doll.”
Arista went off on an excited yammer about her first back flip and a successful dismount. Without missing a beat he asked questions about her progress and how she was enjoying class. She wasn’t ready for her first competition as of yet, but he’d seen her on enough video footage to know that was where his daughter was headed. Like everything Arista did, her enthusiasm for the newfound pastime was extraordinary. He loved to watch her ever-advancing mind at work when she discovered another interest. Currently, she’d already taken to spelling bees, gymnastics, horseback riding, swimming and fashion. The latter wasn’t particularly surprising considering her mother’s own career choices as a lingerie designer for a widely popular franchise of intimate apparel. Ashleigh suspected that soon enough, Arista would be picking up another pastime that would cost him in money and her mother in energy. But neither would complain. Not when someone so small had managed to bring both so much incomparable joy, even if it were accompanied by aggravation at times.
At six, Arista was a handful of funny expressions and precocious words that made her the center of attention whenever she entered a room, and it was very hard to imagine a day going by where he didn’t get a chance to avidly listen to one of her stories. When Mackenzie had gotten pregnant, he’d been a second round draft pick for Miami and unsure of how far his career would take him, but he’d known that he could find the motivation to carry the three of them without question. Who would have thought that he wouldn’t have to carry anyone but Arista soon afterwards?
“Your ten minutes are up, Ari-bear,” Mackenzie announced in the background. “Tell Papa Bear you love him.”
Ashleigh closed his eyes. Papa Bear. She’d started calling him that the first time they’d gotten to hear the gentle pumping of Arista’s heartbeat in utero, and she hadn’t stopped as of yet. The theme in the nursery had been that of a small brown skinned princess found slumbering in a grizzly’s den, her face a mirror image of Arista’s.
“The pretty lady I live with says I have to go to bed now.”
He laughed at the exasperation in her voice. “The pretty lady is right, baby-doll. Can’t upset her, now can we?”
“Guess not.”
Fighting more laughter, he asked her, “Do you know how much Daddy loves you?”
Arista waited a moment and then answered softly, “More than his next breath?”
Ashleigh nodded from his end. “That’s right.”
She blew raspberry laden kisses across the line and he returned them before the phone was passed on to Mackenzie again.
“Thank you for that,” she said, her voice soft and warm. “She wasn’t moving until she talked to you.”
“You don’t have to thank me for talking to our daughter, Mac. I was thinking of her when you called.” He paused. “Both of you, actually.” It was all he could ever manage to think about anymore.
She made a noncommittal sound. “Yeah well…I know you’ve got things to do so…”
“It’s the off-season. My list of things to do is pretty short.” Ashleigh shifted, tapping his foot against the floorboard. “Speaking of which, I uh…I know Arista was supposed to come and visit in a few weeks but I was wondering—”
“—If you could reschedule?” Mackenzie finished. “It’s fine if you need to push it back.”
He shook his head and realized she couldn’t see him. “No. I don’t need to reschedule. I still have those three weeks cleared out for her. I just…I need a change of scenery for a little bit so I wanted to actually come and visit there instead, in Charlotte.”
“Oh.” There was a scraping sound like a chair was being pushed back. “Give me a second, the doorbell just rang.”
“Stay on the line until you know who it is,” he told her, sitting up.
“There aren’t that many people that would come by at this time of night, Ash.”
“Don’t care. Stay on the line.”
He caught her annoyed sigh but ignored it. The locks clicked from her side after a few seconds and she breathed, “Michael.”
Ashleigh’s hand balled, knocking against his thigh as the muscle—like the rest of him—tensed at the name. Michael. Mackenzie’s fiancé. The usurper taking his place, spending time with his girls.
A deep voice greeted her, and maturity alone kept him from slinging his phone out of the window when he heard the man ask for a kiss.
Mackenzie came back seconds later. “Ash?”
“Still here,” he gritted out.
“You know you’re welcome to visit, Ari,” she told him. “I think it would make a really nice surprise. She enjoyed Equine Adventures. Maybe you could take her to Frisco again? Visit some of the islands in the Outer Banks?”
“Yeah. That sounds like a plan. I’ll,”—he cleared his throat—“get the confirmation on the dates and my flight to you by the end of the week. Don’t tell her I’m coming.”
“Great. Michael’s waiting to watch a movie with me so…”
He didn’t need to hear anything else. “Night, Mac.”
“Night, Ash.”
The call ended and he whispered the words on the edge of his tongue, even while knowing she couldn’t hear them. “I love you.”
***
“Ashleigh’s planning to come here?”
Mackenzie stopped herself from grimacing at the quiet question that sounded a lot more like an accusation. She’d been standing in her foyer, staring at the still blinking image of Ashleigh and Arista wearing false lashes and lipstick, pouting into the camera. There weren’t many men who’d don make-up to attend a tea party in their daughter’s room and leave physical evidence of that very thing in the hands of someone else, but he’d snapped the photo and sent it with a caption that said, “I’m not a huge fan of red but I think it brings out the color of my eyes.” Mackenzie had been in the midst of an advertising meeting when she’d received it and almost choked. He’d never been a man afraid of embarrassment if it made the people he loved happy. She hadn’t been on the receiving end of that devotion for a very long time now. Every once and a while, she was reminded of how much that stung.
“Yes,” she finally answered, turning to face Michael as she slipped her phone into the pocket of her robe. “Apparently he’d like a change of scenery.”
Michael leaned against the foyer wall and grunted. “And that’s something he couldn’t get in…California?”
Mackenzie stared down at the patterned rug beneath her feet. “You have a problem with Arista’s father making time to come and see her?” The query was asked mildly enough, but he clearly read the underlying message, “Don’t say anything stupid.”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” he instantly denied. “I think the time he carves out to spend with her is more than what most parents do when they actually live with their kids.”
She nodded and started past him, headed for the kitchen. That wasn’t inaccurate. During his off-season, Ashleigh usually spent several consecutive weeks with Arista and when he couldn’t be with her, there was Face Time and phone calls. He quizzed her on vocabulary and helped with homework. While doing guest segments on various live shows, he never hesitated to mention their daughter and when he could visit for important holidays or events, he either came himself or had the moments filmed professionally so he didn’t miss a second of it. Undeniably, Ashleigh Thyne was an excellent father. He’d just been a shitty spouse. Which was why she currently had the weight of another man’s ring circling the finger of her left hand.
“But,” Michael started, following her. “I’m not totally convinced that’s the only reason he visits when he does make the time.”
Mackenzie bypassed the original thought of coffee and instead reached for a bottle of Riesling. This discussion…again. “What other reason would there be?”
“Mac…”
She jerked down a glass. “Having some?”
There was a sigh. “No.”
Shrugging, she
uncorked the bottle and poured a generous amount. When she turned around, holding the glass, Michael was watching her. “What?”
“Where’s he staying?”
Mackenzie frowned. “Where’s who staying?”
“Ashleigh. Where’s he staying?”
She leaned against the counter at her back and took a sip from her glass. “He’ll probably get a rental or maybe a suite. Why?”
Michael tried, and failed, a casual look. “Just asking.”
“Feels more like an interrogation,” she muttered into her goblet.
“I’m not trying to interrogate you, Mac. I’m just…” he stopped, exhaled. “Nothing.” He rubbed his hands together and gave her a grin that should have been appealing, but her annoyance prevented the desired effect.
Her mind was elsewhere. Something was wrong with Ashleigh. As much as she didn’t want to, she cared. She’d always care. And that was a part of the problem, wasn’t it? Arista wasn’t the only one excited at the sound of her father’s voice. There were some that swore you never forgot your first, and she had been doing everything in her power to disprove that theory from the moment she handed him back his ring and unseated herself from the comfortable home they’d built together. She was still working on it. Still shoving him out of the proverbial door and attempting to deadbolt it, but fuck if she could when there was a clone of his running about and stealing every corner of her heart with a simple, lyrical call of, “Mommy.”
She may have left him but he’d gifted her with something irreplaceable. Their daughter, for all her dramatic air and disturbing narcissism exhibited at such an early age, was a part of the reason the sun rose and set for Mackenzie. She was the one and only thing that had kept her from tipping over into a depression that couldn’t be rivaled. Being emotionally selfish where Arista was concerned just didn’t seem plausible. There was so much light there behind those kewpie eyes and that blinding smile. That smile was identical to the one Mackenzie still saw when she closed her own eyes on most nights. She was wrong for those feelings, for fretting over a long dead love that she should have shaken by now.